How are you charging your business battery?
In the last episode, I spoke about the customer journey with you and what might be broken in that; in particular, how to find out what to fix. In this episode, I want to step back, and talk about what you need to fix in your own business, to enable you to provide that outstanding customer journey.
In episode 218 of the InovaBuzz podcast, I spoke with Mike Michalowicz, the author of Profit First, about how to grow profitably and eradicate Entrepreneurial Poverty. Mike has just released his newest book, Fix This Next.
In this, he points out that the biggest problem entrepreneurs have is that they don’t know, what their biggest problem is.
Do you know what your biggest problem is? Do you know what you need to fix first?
Listen to the podcast to find out more.
Listen to the Podcast
Show Notes – Recharging Your Business Battery
- Mike Michalowicz in Fix This Next, talks about a Business Hierarchy of Needs and explains that there are five fundamental categories of need: Sales | Profit | Order | Impact | Legacy. He classifies the first three as “Get” needs and the fourth and fifth as “Give” needs, and points out that, unless your business has the needs of Sales, Profit and Order fulfilled, you can’t deliver well on the Impact and Legacy needs, which is what your customer experience is about.
- You must put the health of your business first. You need to have consistent sales, profit, and efficiency within your business to be able to contribute, give impact, and achieve a legacy.
- Just like our Solar Power System charges our battery first, before sending power back into the grid – your business needs to charge the needs of Sales, Profit and Order, before being fully effective in having Impact and building a Legacy.
Mike Michalowicz’s Business Hierarchy of Needs:
- Sales – the source of inbound cash flow, the fulfillment of an agreement
- Profit – the retention of cash that brings stability. Whilst sales is the creation of cash, profit is the stability of business through cash.
- Order – maximising efficiency in all elements of the business.
- Impact – having a business that is no longer about transaction but transformation. It’s how you are changing the lives of your customers and the greatest impact that you are having. – exciting | Marketing Human | Customer Experience.
- Legacy – having a business that is designed to run in perpetuity and to deliver some form of goodness and impact to the community.
On the Fix This Next website, you’ll find an assessment that guides you through a series of 25 questions, to help you identify the area in your business that might need immediate recharging.
The questions ask you to rate how you deliver the customer experience, whether customers repeat purchase from you, whether they are actively promoting your business. You are questioned about your profit margins and how you use debt; about how your business operates when key people are absent; about the motivation of your team; about the planning structure; your cash reserves; your sales funnel; your conversion rate.
I found, that simply by asking the questions and answering with some considered thought and of course total honesty to myself, that some key opportunities for improvement crystallised out. I encourage you to look through the questions and experience what comes up for you.
You might be surprise at what area of your business needs recharging.
I highly recommend you read Fix This Next by Mike Michalowicz – and go to FixThisNext.com/resources, for the free resources, see the Business Hierarchy of Needs and identify which part of your business battery needs charging. I’m curious to find out what you learn – let me know!
My mission is to do Good Marketing, to make marketing Human, to make marketing a FORCE for GOOD – characterized by service, empathy, transparency and to make a meaningful difference to the people we care about AND to their customers too
Thank you for coming on this journey of Marketing Transformation with me. Let’s make marketing human again.
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Resources
- Fix This Next by Mike Michalowicz
- Website – Fix This Next
- Mike Michalowicz, Profit First – InnovaBuzz 218
- Tales of Marketing Transformation Facebook Group – Join the Community here (Free but Priceless!)
- The InnovaBuzz Podcast – our other podcast on Innovation and Marketing, with awesome guests each week.
Listen to the Podcast
